A view of the pool in Iqaluktuutiaq (Cambridge Bay), Nunavut, as captured by community members for Google Maps. The pool was closed in 2019. (Image: Google Maps)
TEXT Alexandra Pereira-Edwards, Misca Birklein-Lagassé and Zaven Titizian
When a Google Street View team was invited to Nunavut, Canada, in 2012, their first stop was Iqaluktuuttiaq (?????????, Cambridge Bay). While those visiting the remote hamlet surveyed it using a Google Trike, members of the community were trained to use Google?s camera equipment and learned how to add roads to the online map. Capturing these images was an opportunity for Nunavummiut to present their community to the rest of the world.
One of the indoor spaces that got a 360-degree treatment was the Cambridge Bay pool, with its brightly painted plywood walls and laminated signage describing rules for pool use, admissions requirements, and notes on ice safety?reminders aimed at lowering the high drowning rates in the Territory. While the pool remains virtually open for view, its recreational function in the community halted in July of 2019 when the hamlet closed the facility early in its already short season. The 30-year-old building was deemed structurally unsafe as a result of thawing permafrost, a reminder of the amplified effects of global warming in the community. Its deck was slumping, its metal was corroding, and the supports under its liner were weakening, threatening to suck swimmers under the building should the liner burst. The pool...